


cityscape, & girl in the park

by khalasaar



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: 2000 in words in a day damn, F/F, Fluff, anyway, cute lil oneshot!, go me, heehee, hope that doesn't mean it's shitty and i didn't notice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 13:46:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5419334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khalasaar/pseuds/khalasaar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The title of Maya's latest painting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cityscape, & girl in the park

**Author's Note:**

> @ the anon who asked me to write this: girl, you have good taste, god bless you 
> 
> ALSO, LISTEN: if y'all want me to write something specific send me a message @ philtaatos.tumblr.com with requests/prompts/whatever!! I'd totally love it

Maya has no idea what to do. No fucking clue. 

Usually, the art just comes out of her: streams of it that fill notebooks and notebooks, flooding the paper as it comes out of her fingers, electric and unbidden. She never has any problem conjuring ideas or inspiration. On good days, it hits her on all sides, six hours straight worth of _I-know-what-to-do!_ On good days, it’s hard _not_ to be constantly painting. The urge to draw just builds and builds, until she ends up scribbling all over her textbooks, her arms, the marbled maple-wood top of her desk. 

But when deadlines come? When the art teacher asks her to get something done by next week - something that’ll be hanging in the halls for the whole semester, for their entire school to see - and gives her a smile so proud, so sweet, it makes Maya’s heart hurt?

Well. 

Then, of course, she has no idea what to do.

It’s Monday, the first day of the assignment, and already Maya can feel frustration clouding her vision. Sure, it's only due in a week, but for some reason it feels like it needs to get _done_ already. She’s in Central Park, filling pages and pages with mediocre drawings that don’t look right. She came here right after school, has already been parked out in her seat for an hour and a half, and nothing is working.

It should. Everything is gorgeous: it’s 5 PM now, and New York is on fire. Every building is lit up yellow-red-orange, reflecting the early sunset, all shiny and dystopian in the strange coastal light. And she can’t fucking paint it. She’s wasted so much color and paper on the scene already - Central Park, the towers and the bristling, crocodile-green trees - and it _should_ be working, she knows it should, but somehow she can’t stop messing it up. Paint is making a relief map out of her palm lines, crawling in threads all the way up her forearms, but not a single work is good enough. Maya lets out a growl through her teeth, wipes the paint off her hands and onto her fraying jeans.

People have been filtering in and out, walking dogs and riding bikes and skateboards, but not one of them has sat down on the bench across the road. It remains stubbornly empty, except for a slow scattering of leaves that drifts down from the treetops, filling the seats with crackling auburn leaves and debris. Maya is frowning at her many shitty paintings, frowning so hard that she doesn’t notice the girl that skips in to take a seat - not until the leaves on the other bench start to crackle, crumpling as the stranger shoves them aside.

Maya snaps to attention, nearly tearing apart a page of her sketchpad. The girl across the road is kicking leaves off one side of the bench and plopping down on the other. She has long, dark hair and big doe-eyes, impossibly lengthy legs and a light that buzzes all around her, something bright and happy that’s impossible to describe. She seems vaguely familiar, but Maya can’t put a name to the face.

The girl turns - hair whiplashing over her shoulders, her hazel eyes rich and vivid in the dark - and the rest of her face is revealed: the kind of face that startles Maya into thinking, _holy shit, she’s gorgeous_. Okay, Maya would remember someone like _that_. All dark eyelashes, high cheekbones, an innocent glow to her face. Sunlight dripping from her pores. Shining out of her fingertips. 

It’s nuts.

Maya realizes she might be staring, but it's impossible to stop. She’s already sketching, something she doesn’t realize until halfway through - until the side of her hand is sticky with charcoal, and the first page is filled with different angles of the girl. Maya can feel it tugging in her chest, spilling out of her and onto the paper without any effort, and it's the weirdest thing. The light hits her just right, like something out of a movie, or a Renaissance painting. Every time the stranger turns, a new facet of her face opens up, more interesting and ethereal than the last. She has one knee pulled to her chest, a textbook opened across her lap, is absently batting leaves out of the air as they drift down around her.

Normal people would do all this. And for some reason, on her, it's friggin' fascinating.

Maya draws her orange-yellow-gold, sun pouring onto her skin, the flora gathering around her, swelling and sinking in the rhythm of fall.

Oh, man. Maya’s fingers are vibrating, all the nerves in her body sparking with inspiration. A smile is creeping up over her face, unbidden. 

It seems as though they stay there forever, although it’s probably only an hour or so. The girl barely moves, just flips her pages serenely, golden in the draining light, and stays perfectly still as the leaves drift down and down around her. Maya goes through pages and pages of her sketchbook, fills practically the whole thing. She stays there so long, so still, that her whole body starts to ache - her hands are cramping, fingers numb and bloodless, and she can feel a bruise blossoming over the place where her hip connects with the bench. But it doesn’t matter. Holy shit, it doesn’t matter, because it’s _working_.

Sometime after six, when the sky has gone dark-dark-dark, the girl across the bench finally starts to move. She whirls off her seat, spraying leaves onto the concrete, and jumps up to brush off her dress in one quick movement. Her boots thunder on the pavement; she slides her books into her bag, zips it up and throws it over one shoulder before turning and starting toward the exit. All grace and limbs. She moves fast, for someone who was just still for so long. Maya unfolds her legs, thighs burning in protest, and prepares to watch her go. 

They haven’t spoken at all, but the girl pauses before she leaves: turns over her shoulder and, very purposefully, catches Maya’s eye. Grins, her teeth fluorescent in the dim light, wide enough that two deep dimples burst into life across her cheeks. Her eyes are dark and electric under the streetlights. 

She waves, fingernails flashing bright pink, and gives Maya a smirk that could light up the whole park before she turns and disappears, her silhouette swallowed, after just a moment, by the next grove of trees.  
￼

***

It takes Maya ages to stop thinking about her. That little wave, her lightbulb smile. She goes home and flips through every page of her sketchbook, amazed by how well the sketches turned out, how ethereally gorgeous the girl is. It also takes her ages to get the stains off her hands - every color of paint in the rainbow, charcoal dust, ink marks that bleed into her pores. The sink goes a dirty, dusty black, and so does the towel she wipes her hands on after. She throws her sketchbook on the bed, since she can barely look at it - full to the brim and bleeding paint everywhere, buzzing with energy and inspiration. 

This _rarely_ happens. Rarely. But Maya loves it.

She showers, tries not to jinx it by thinking too hard. Spends a solid ten minutes combing through the curls her hair makes when it’s wet, staring out the window to where New York is lit up all over, neon and humming with energy. A breeze swirls in, cold and carrying the smell of exhaust as well as the oak trees on Maya’s street. 

This whole thing is weird, weird, weird. And she kind of likes it.

She comes back into her room after drying off, shivering in ripped Van Gogh pajamas, and when she sees the wind has opened the pad to a 3/4 portrait of the girl - her face ethereal and serene, even on paper - something warm rises in her chest, a bird in flight, drawing the kind of smile out of her that’s just impossible to fight.  
￼ 

***

Ms. Kossal ends up hanging the drawing that the wind chose - done in charcoal, messy and beautiful, with Maya’s fingerprints all over it.

“You got someone to model for you?” she asks, pleasantly surprised, as she tacks one corner into the wall.

“Sort of,” Maya says, guiltily.

The lunch bell rings, and from then on, she doesn’t think much of it. She has friends, sort of, but no one that she particularly _enjoys_. So there’s not anyone to talk to, anyway. She’s not expecting an outpouring of support, for anyone to come up and compliment her, or to hear people gushing about that portrait in the east wing. Her algebra homework is more important. Especially the fact that it’s due in two hours, and she hasn’t started.

Before fifth period, she circles back to the hall to grab something from her locker. People are barely looking at the new art on the walls, instead passing the exhibition with their heads down, whispering and giggling, so confident Maya sees them as giants in the narrow walkway. She focuses instead on wrestling the textbook from her locker, where it’s crammed between a bunch of paint palettes and torn-up notebooks, jammed in between so many things it looks like the world’s hardest game of Jenga. 

Just as she starts to disassemble the pile, it happens.

Footsteps screeching on the linoleum, piercing and prolonged. Then halting, completely. A girl saying - “Is that _me_?”

Maya freezes.

“Lucas, is that _me_?” The girl’s voice again, shrill with disbelief this time. There’s the very distinct sound of someone being punched, Lucas (she’s guessing) letting out a yelp, and then the scuffling of sneakers on tiles. 

Oh, man.

Maya wants to be swallowed by her locker. Lucas Friar… that can’t be good. He’s exactly the kind of person Maya steers away from, due more to jealousy than anything else. And there’s obviously a girl with him. Park girl? She couldn’t possibly go here, Maya thinks, she would’ve noticed. Unfortunately, there’s no way to check. 

Well. Unless she turns around. But that’s absolutely not in the plan.

Someone lets out a short, barking laugh. The sound of shoving, or hitting, comes up again. “That’s totally you,” says a boy’s voice. Not Lucas'. She thinks it's probably that boy Farkle, the one who helps her out in algebra sometimes. She should really talk to him more.

_Okay, now is so not the time to be thinking about your social life._

“It can’t be. Dude.” A chair clatters, screeches in protest as it’s dragged over the floor, and someone steps onto it. “Wait, what was I wearing last Monday?”

One of the boys, she can't tell who, exhales. “Um, I think-“

“It was this!” Paper rustling. “I was wearing exactly that! Last Monday!” Footsteps hitting the ground. “I totally know who did it. That girl I told you about that was in the park, on the bench across from me? Drawing like crazy but I couldn’t tell what? The insanely hot one?”

Maya goes up in flames. 

“Yeah." Farkle this time, sounding like he has a smirk on his face. "But you didn’t talk to her at all, did you?”

“No. She looked busy. But she must go here, right? She’s blonde, shorter than me, blue eyes. Oh-“ The sound of fingers snapping. “And, she had this really cute bag with-“

The voices stop.

Maya braces for impact.

“Excuse me?” 

Unbe-friggin-lievable.

She forces herself to turn, a Crest-strip smile planted on her face, one hand planted against the locker for support and dreading the moment that comes on so, _so_ slowly: Park Girl appearing, right in front of her face.

Sun-bright, her eyebrows raised, hair straightened and laying in wisps around her face, the faintest smile tugging at her lips. The girl has one hand planted on the wall to the right of Maya’s head, her weight held on one foot, and is leaning close enough that Maya can pick out every pore on her face - can _feel_ when the girl rakes a hand through her hair, the dark strands falling away as her fingers leave them, to brush faintly against the rise of Maya’s chest. Her eyes narrow into vivid hazel slits, and Maya can see her dark eyelashes fluttering, just barely, in curiosity.

Then the girl snaps back, separating them like two north-pole magnets. 

“Is that yours?” Maya’s gaze flickers up, to where Park Girl is pointing at the picture that is, _yes_ , very obviously of her. The blonde grits her teeth and nods, hesitantly. “It’s great.” 

“What?” Maya’s eyebrows shoot upward. The girl _looks_ completely serious, but the words that just came out of her mouth don’t match it at all. “You’re not - uh - _mad?_ ” 

“No. I mean, not really.” The girl bites down a smile, eyes sparkling in the brighter hallway lights. “You could’ve asked. But you did such a good job, I can’t really be upset.” A full grin bursts over her face, bringing back the dimples. “I’m flattered.” 

“Oh.” Maya giggles, feeling relief flood her system. “Oh, good. You were just really, really pretty.” 

It’s one of those moments, Maya thinks, love-stupid, in which she’s _really_ glad she was born a girl who’s not shy about her feelings. Life mottos. They come in handy. 

“Thanks. I’m Riley,” the girl says, sticking out a hand to shake. She’s strangely vibrant in this light, her smile warm and shy, so pretty that Maya’s fingers are already aching to draw her again. 

“Maya,” she introduces. “Nice to meet you.” 

“You too. Hey-“ Riley’s eyes narrow in teasing, a look of mock confusion crossing her face. “You still looking for a model?” 

“Are you offering?” Maya asks, eyebrows raised. 

“I charge six dollars an hour.” 

“Below minimum wage, huh?” 

“I’m assuming, y’know, as an art student, you’re not rolling in the dough.” 

“You’re one smart cookie.” Maya winks and straightens up, closes the locker behind her and slides into orbit next to Riley, feeling lighter than she ever has. “Where’re you headed?” 

“History.” 

“That’s weird. I thought we had chemistry together?” Maya gets through one second of seriousness, straight-faced and innocent, before she bursts into laughter so potent it sends her into stitches. Riley squeals in delight, shoving at her playfully. Maya throws her hands up in submission, catches the look in Riley’s eyes, and is struck by a crippling rush of affection for the universe, for the art project and the park that pulled them together. 

_Getting sappy already,_ she thinks, not even disappointed. 

“Okay, okay,” Maya says, relenting. “I already used my best line. So,” she grins, heart fluttering, “your move.” 


End file.
